A Biden supporter holds up his cellphone in Philadelphia on Nov. 7, 2020 to show the U.S. electoral map, with the states supporting Mr. Biden in blue and those supporting Donald Trump in red. Mr. Biden won a clear majority of the Electoral College votes needed to win the presidency.John Minchillo/The Associated Press
An inconspicuous American civic group meets Monday for the 59th time, its procedures ordinarily nearly impenetrable, its proceedings routinely conducted in obscurity, its implications almost always ignored.
Not ignored this year, though.
This year the meeting of the Electoral College – the group that, rather than the American people, actually chooses the president of the United States – is freighted with significance. And with mystery. And with enormous implications for the future of democratic rule and democratic institutions.
Both powerful and powerless, America’s 538 electors include a Maine high-schooler
This quadrennial “college” meeting is not like a Princeton or Dartmouth campus reunion. No boozy embraces, no gauzy reminiscences of past glories, no a cappella recitals, no swaying arm-in-arm renderings of beloved ancient anthems and football fight songs.
Instead, this meeting of a mostly ignored college with members scattered across a wide continent will decide whether former vice-president Joe Biden takes the Constitutional Oath of Office on the West Front of the Capitol in Washington – or whether President Donald J. Trump, who received 7 million fewer popular votes than Mr. Biden nearly five weeks ago and, in public but tentative tallies, 74 fewer electoral votes, remains in the White House.
NUMBER OF ELECTORS PER STATE
NORTHEAST REGION
ME: 4
VT: 3
NH: 4
NY: 29
MA: 11
RI: 4
CT: 7
PA: 20
NJ: 14
MIDWEST REGION
MN
10
ND: 3
WI
10
MI
16
SD: 3
IA: 6
NE: 5
IN
11
OH: 18
IL
20
MO
10
KS: 6
SOUTH REGION
MD: 10
DE: 3
DC: 3
WV: 5
VA: 13
KY: 8
NC: 15
TN: 11
OK: 7
AR
6
SC: 9
AL
9
GA
16
MS
6
LA
8
TX: 38
FL
29
WEST REGION
WA: 12
MT: 3
OR: 7
ID
4
WY: 3
NV: 6
UT: 6
CA
55
CO: 9
AZ: 11
NM: 5
AK
3
HI
4
THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: REUTERS;
U.S. CENSUS BUREAU
NUMBER OF ELECTORS PER STATE
NORTHEAST REGION
ME: 4
VT: 3
NY: 29
MA: 11
RI: 4
CT: 7
PA: 20
NJ: 14
NH: 4
MIDWEST REGION
MN
10
ND: 3
WI
10
MI
16
SD: 3
IA: 6
NE: 5
IN
11
OH: 18
IL
20
MO
10
KS: 6
SOUTH REGION
MD: 10
DE: 3
DC: 3
WV: 5
VA: 13
KY: 8
NC: 15
TN: 11
OK: 7
AR
6
SC: 9
AL
9
GA
16
MS
6
LA
8
TX: 38
FL
29
WEST REGION
WA: 12
MT: 3
OR: 7
ID
4
WY: 3
NV: 6
UT: 6
CA
55
CO: 9
AZ: 11
NM: 5
AK
3
HI
4
THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: REUTERS; U.S. CENSUS BUREAU
NUMBER OF ELECTORS PER STATE
WA: 12
VT: 3
ME: 4
MT: 3
MN
10
ND: 3
OR: 7
ID
4
NY
29
MA: 11
WI
10
MI
16
SD: 3
RI: 4
WY: 3
CT: 7
PA: 20
IA: 6
NH: 4
NV: 6
NE: 5
IN
11
NJ: 14
OH: 18
IL
20
UT: 6
CA
55
CO: 9
DE: 3
WV: 5
MO
10
KS: 6
VA: 13
KY: 8
MD: 10
NC: 15
DC: 3
TN: 11
AZ: 11
OK: 7
AR
6
NM: 5
SC: 9
AL
9
GA
16
MS
6
LA
8
TX: 38
FL
29
AK
3
HI
4
THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: REUTERS
Seldom has a brief mysterious gathering of nearly anonymous citizens had such enormous long-term implications.
At stake is not only the presidency, though in this age, when a single nation possesses unmatched financial, military and even cultural power, that cannot be underestimated. Also at stake are the endurance of a 232-year old political system and faith in America’s public institutions. Plus this: the country’s revered tradition of the peaceful transfer of power, consecrated when the Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson replaced the Federalist John Adams as president in 1801 without incident in the same era as the violent upheavals of la Terreur that grew out of the French Revolution.
This year, the members of the Electoral College will be watched as perhaps never before, or at least since 1876, when Democratic governor Samuel J. Tilden of New York won more popular votes than governor Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio and, in early counts, more electoral votes as well. But that year, Electoral College disputes in Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Oregon threw the election into chaos, and eventually Mr. Hayes was awarded the presidency by one electoral vote.
To be sure, there have been several Electoral College irregularities over the years, with so-called “faithless electors” pledged to one candidate actually casting a vote for another. This has occurred 156 times in American history, but earlier this year the Supreme Court upheld two state statutes imposing sanctions on electors who deviate from their pledges. More than three-fifths of the states have laws requiring electors to conform with public expectations that they vote in December for the candidate who won the state’s popular vote in November.
When he was Canadian ambassador to the United States, the diplomat Allan Gotlieb developed an enduring maxim explaining American political life, which might be summarized this way: In American politics, nothing is ever over, and even when it seems as if it is over, it still is not over.
That is the case with the Electoral College. The certificates of the electors’ Monday votes are to be delivered by Dec. 23. The two houses of Congress then meet Jan. 6 to tally the votes. If there are objections, the two houses would recess and meet separately for no more than two hours. Then they would meet again in joint session, and even then that might not be the end point. Nobody alive has ever witnessed this spectacle, which is a minor miracle since there have been 187 occasions since 1824 when state results were decided by less than 2 percentage points.
All this – plus the reality that five times, including 2000 and 2016, the winner of the popular vote has lost the election – has raised questions about the fairness and the durability of the Electoral College.
In recent years the objections have come mainly from the Democrats, who except in 1888 have been penalized by the Electoral College system. Nearly a third of the states (accounting for 196 electoral votes by the current census figures) have passed the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which would require states to delegate their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the popular vote nationwide, thus negating the peculiarities of the current system. This proposal now requires assent from states accounting for 74 more electoral votes, and it has been approved in one (but not both) legislative chambers in states accounting for 88 electoral votes.
It is possible, however, that the recent effort by Mr. Trump to overturn election results in several states could prompt Democrats to see fresh advantages in the Electoral College system. “Because the Electoral College places power in 50 separate states and not in the federal government,” said John Yoo, a conservative legal theorist at the University of California, Berkeley, who was prominent in the George W. Bush administration, “progressives may come to see that it makes it hard to hack the current system and cheat an election.”
For the time being, however, the Electoral College remains in place.
The other day I called L. Sandy Maisel, a Colby College political scientist who is perhaps the leading student of Maine politics, and read him the list of the electors from Maine. He could not identify them as vital elements of the presidential election. “Nobody knows who these people are,” he said.
A few years ago, Maine selected Colby’s assistant registrar – an inconspicuous college official responsible for filing grades, providing transcripts and collecting tuition payments – as one of the state’s presidential electors. Professor Maisel invited her to his American Government class. “I brought her in,” he said, as “‘show-and-tell.’”
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